this period of disruption and trouble Counsellor, who happened to
be distantly connected with him, came into his life. They did not meet
very often and spoke little when together, but mutual knowledge and
liking resulted. Friendship is a living thing: it cannot be made; it
grows.

Rallywood, when he turned to seek the means of a livelihood, found
himself, as he said long afterwards, standing in the corridor of life
with all the doors shut and no key to open them.

His tastes and training alike led in the direction of a military career,
and presently he went out to the Cape, where he spent a year or two in a
police force which was in time disbanded, and he returned to England
once more at a loose end.

At this juncture Major Counsellor suggested to him the possibility of
obtaining a commission in the little army of the Duchy of Maasau. This
hint set him on the right track. The regiments of Maasau, though few in
number, carried splendid traditions. Their ranks were drawn from a
stolid, silent peasantry, and officered by a wire-strung, high tempered
aristocracy, born of a mixed race, it is true, but none the less
frantically devoted to the freedom and independence of their shred of a
fatherland.

In compliance with a private request on the part of Major Counsellor the
British Minister at Revonde bestirred himself to procure a commission
for Rallywood, who thus became a lieutenant in the Frontier Cavalry, and
for more than five years had taken his share in riding and keeping the
marches of Maasau gaining much experience in capturing smugglers and in
superintending the digging out of snowed up trains. But life on the
frontier, though crammed with physical activity and routine work, was in
every other respect monotonously empty, and breaks in the shape of
furlough were few and far between. Half liked, wholly respected, and a
little feared amongst his comrades, but always remaining a lieutenant to
whom now, the State owed eighteen months' arrears of pay, Rallywood, in
return, owed to Maasau only the qualified service of an unpaid man, but
gave it the full devotion of a capable officer.

As to Counsellor, no one could quite account for his presence at Revonde
at the present moment. He was supposed to be attached in some indefinite
way to the Legation, but he described himself as a bird of passage,
whose appearance in the European capital simply meant whim or pleasure,
for he was growing old and lazy and could not be broug